Microsoft pokes some long-overdue fun at iOS

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It used to be the console wars and browser battles, now it’s the tablet skirmishes. I still remember when Microsoft and Sony would buy advertising space on opposite sides of a busy Japanese street and periodically change posters in ongoing and increasingly hostile conversations. Gamers, being the sorts of people they tend to be, took to this rivalry, not so much with gusto, as wild abandon. Those were wars, man. It’s difficult to envision the same happening in the tablet space, even given that the sector is home to two of technology’s most deeply entrenched rivals. New Windows 8 tablets have brought MS and Apple back into direct and furious competition, as seen in the latest round of advertisements.

The enmity between Microsoft and Apple has dimmed a bit, of late, probably due to the fact that they’ve been shooting for divergent sections of the market. Though some thought it was a bit much to cast John Hodgeman as a PC and have him bumble around like a fool, I always thought such gentle prodding was fairly tame. Microsoft’s response at the time was well rendered but overly dramatic.

This week’s video sees Microsoft taking some gentle jabs of its own — we’ll see if Apple will be hypocritical enough to respond with indignation…

This is what Microsoft should have been doing all along. The brilliance of the initial “I’m a Mac” campaign was that virtually everything said in those commercials is correct — PCs are less user-friendly than Macs, and they do tend to acquire simple, frustrating problems that ought to be avoidable in the modern era. The correct response would have been to come right back at their competitors with equally accurate observations — and that’s what they’ve done.

iOS devices really are more restricted than Windows ones (though not by nearly the same margin as OSX and Windows for desktops.) The swipe at Apple’s seeming phobia of full featured multi-tasking is particularly well aimed, so much so that it gives us to wonder why it took so long to make such observations in the first place. These are the arguments that Microsoft’s fans have been making for years, now.

Given the underwhelming performance of Windows 8 tablets, it’s about time Microsoft stepped up and did a little of it, themselves.